ungrammatical

From un- +‎ grammatical.

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ungrammatical (comparative more ungrammatical, superlative most ungrammatical)

1. (linguistics) In violation of one or more of the rules and conventions of a language as defined by the grammar, resulting in unacceptable or incorrect usage.

   Synonyms: agrammatical, ungrammatic

   Antonym: grammatical

   • 1985, Anthony Burgess, Kingdom of the Wicked:

     My Greek is not the tongue of Homer or Aeschylus but a sloppy ungrammatical sabir lacking Attic salt and tending to a saccharinity which sets my teeth on edge.

   • 2018 February 17, Devan Cole, “LeBron James: ‘I am more than an athlete’”, in CNN‎^[1]:

     That comment seemed to anger Ingraham, who called James’ view a “barely intelligible, not to mention ungrammatical take on President Trump.”

   • 2019 September 17, Kendall Trammell, “Merriam-Webster adds the nonbinary pronoun ‘they’ to its dictionary”, in CNN‎^[2]:

     While adopting the pronoun as a nonbinary description is vastly preferable for some, Merriam-Webster says, there has also been some debate that it is ungrammatical.

• In formal linguistics, ungrammatical sentences are labelled using an asterisk (*):
  • *The subject of this sentence is.
  • This convention goes back at least as far as Leonard Bloomfield's Language (1933).
• In the precise usage of linguistics, being ungrammatical does not mean violating prescription; rather, it means violating requirements of the language that are descriptively obligate. For example, the following sentences are not ungrammatical; they are merely proscribed by some outdated notions:
  • "If they ask who donated the money for the bicycles, tell them it was Santa Claus, not me."
  • "There are some types of shenanigans that the teacher simply won't put up with."

• ungrammaticalized